Have you ever wondered how marketing would be practiced in 2020? The first chapter of most marketing books explains how marketing went through an evolution that began with a focus on production in the 19th century, a focus on sales in the first half of the 20th century, and finally, focused marketing. on the consumer, which remains the core philosophy of modern marketers. However, what about execution? In the future, will marketing departments operate as they have in the last 50 years? Given the recent popularity of the bricks and clicks model (a combination of online and offline marketing) that has generated great success stories, Staples and Walmart, personalized online advertising (a combination of Internet advertising and behavior) that became an industry standard and the recent growth of CRM (a combination of customer service and user analytics), I propose that marketing and market research are heading towards convergence. Let me explain…
Over the past 50 years we have seen sales departments become marketing and promotions divisions that were later divided into marketing research, advertising, and strategy branches. And this apparently worked since in the early 90’s there was perhaps not a single large corporation that did not have sub-branches in the marketing department. On the other hand, assigning marketing tasks to smaller divisions, much like the way the military works, might sound like common sense, but not in all circumstances. If there is a need for quick decision making in uncertain environments and if all divisions have to communicate closely and cooperate simultaneously, having many divisions would be an obstacle to achieving group goals. Let’s say the communications department wants to advertise to increase awareness, the promotions department wants to do demos to increase awareness and penetration, the research department wants to do a usage and habit study to understand user dynamics and management you want the ROI numbers to hold up. profitable. While these decisions would be made in the same departmental meeting, these divisions would perform these tasks individually reaching different people thus tripling the time and cost. In addition, it would be three times more difficult to calculate the ROI since we would not know about the overlap and we cannot track the future behavior of the research participants or the consumers who received the free samples. Isn’t it smarter to ask the same consumer about product expectations, then provide samples and promotions, then advertise and finally track their buying behavior in real time. This means researching and marketing to the same consumer by integrating marketing research and marketing operations under one roof. Here are some other reasons why this convergence will happen soon.
Internet Revolution and Cyber ​​Consumers
You may have read over a thousand articles that began with “The Internet Has Changed Everything.” Well, this is also true for marketing. Now, consumers spend 3-4 hours on the Internet every day, get product information online, and shop online. In the past, mass advertising was everything: a million-dollar TV campaign would magically send consumers running to the supermarket to buy your product. However, today it is personalized online ads that rule the world of marketing. Since behavioral targeting is so developed that marketers can calculate the number of online exposures and online buying tendencies, it’s not hard to guess that the same people who decide on ad content will also calculate the ROI, they will make decisions about the shopping cart on the site and write a report. about the impact of each version of the ad. This is not unlike the same type of marketing that handles distribution, ad campaign, and consumer research.
Unstoppable growth of social networks
Everyone knew how important social media is, but it was the moment Facebook announced that it reached the 500 million user base that forever changed the views of all marketers. Now many see social media as the future of the marketing platform and they are not wrong about it. According to Forrester research, 80% of Americans use social media frequently. What makes it so unique is the reality, interactivity and connectivity like no other medium. As you can guess, this is like hitting the jackpot for marketers because people see and interact with ads, buy products/services, and can be surveyed through their social media accounts. Again, it’s just logical not to separate these tasks in order to make better use of social media marketing.
Economic restrictions
In the last two years we have experienced a severe economic recession and no recovery is in sight any time soon. Marketers are also feeling the pain and the cut in their budgets. Although there is no clear data to show whether they are eliminating research or promotions, it is plausible that companies are beginning to consider combining these divisions rather than investing in them separately. Another result of economic constraints is the search for optimal ROI. Marketers are under enormous pressure to increase sales with very limited budgets. Now more than ever, achieving more with less really matters. In the old days, ROI measurement was just an ideal, not necessarily practical, but today, where even Facebook brand group exposure counts as an impression, marketers must report to top management on every penny they spend. spend on your campaign. To achieve a better return on investment, companies are expected to do similar marketing tasks but only for lower costs. As I explained above, the only way to do this would be to survey and advertise to the same consumer which must be handled by the same department.
market trends
Recently, almost all advertising agencies also provide various marketing communication tasks (PR, cause marketing, etc.) in addition to promotions (giveaways, samples, etc.), online marketing solutions, and research consulting (grid of FCB participation, rational, reason why de Young and Rubicam, etc.) Thus, the main research companies try very hard to position themselves as brand strategists and cooperate with advertising agencies. In other words, this convergence is already happening at the provider level. What is yet to come is the inclusion of promotions in the equation.